


Wolf In Firelight

by Twitchiest



Series: Apocalypse Girl [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, Dark, F/M, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Post-Apocalypse, Violence, lovesick puppy protagonist, time skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 07:19:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4597836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twitchiest/pseuds/Twitchiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bay was born two weeks before Darren, the second born in Manor, and they've always been close.</p>
<p>That's why he gets her into trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wolf In Firelight

_**One**_  
  
Bay's a summer child, and the first born in Manor. Her mother and father loved her, she's told, but they died in that outbreak when she was younger. She doesn't remember them. She remembers picking apart old woollen clothes for the threads as a child, face scrunched up with the effort of staying still.  
  
She remembers Boss, giving her a stuffed bear from the city. She still has it, though she's patched him a dozen times.  
  
Bay was born two weeks before Darren, the second born in Manor, and they've always been close.  
  
That's why he gets her into trouble.  
  
_**Two**_  
  
"Come on," he says. "It's fun," he says. He gives her that bright, butter-smile.  
  
What it is doesn't matter so much as the consequences, the fire that singes a corner of the barn and the disappointed looks on Six and Seven's faces when they're found stomping out the last spark. They might have gotten away with it if it wasn't two of the council that found them.  
  
What matters is that he's pulled all the way to the Cellar, and Six takes her into a room in the big house and leaves her there, alone, sitting on a dusty bed.  
  
_**Three**_  
  
Bay's never been useful.  
  
She'll work, but she doesn't have patience for slow jobs or the passion for farming or animals, and she doesn't want to kill. She wants to scout, but she won't pick up a weapon and fight. It doesn't feel right, killing a stranger over something they can just trade for.  
  
She pulls her weight. She earns her way. She doesn't care for her work.  
  
Sometimes she gets radio duty, changing the tapes, taking messages from other places and gangs, mostly Olstead, Dedham, and the Pangers in the city. Strangers she'll never meet, across the empty world.  
  
_**Four**_  
  
The door opens. It wakes her. Bay sits up and stares into the darkness. A shadow-person comes forwards. It's Boss.  
  
Boss is getting old, pushing towards fifty, but she walks gracefully, like time is so afraid of her it barely touches her. She sits on the bed and says, "He likes to set fires."  
  
Bay nods.  
  
"He's going to be exiled," Boss says.  
  
Bay curls her arms around herself and shivers. Not having a home... "Are you going to do that to me?" Bay says.  
  
"Why?" Boss says. "Do you want to go?"  
  
Bay shakes her head. "Not for him."  
  
_**Five**_  
  
Bay's always been the baby of the community. Even when Darren was there to soak up the love and adoration, Bay's been the one that couldn't sit still, even when she tried. She used to run around the fields screaming, scaring the birds.  
  
She's glad it's night when Boss takes her to the room where they judged Darren. Where it's just Boss, One and Leander. She doesn't want anyone to be disappointed in her.  
  
It's a small room. She sits on the chair on its own, in front of a small table. The lantern light flickers and dances above her.  
  
_**Six**_  
  
One and Leander throw words around like they've argued this before. Boss sits in the middle of them, arms folded, staring at the wall above Bay's head.  
  
Bay knows she's a member of the community, but not the most productive. Everyone knows who she is, but that isn't a protection, and Darren's smile has gotten her more probems than anyone needs.  
  
She won't get to see that butter-smile any more. Won't get to kiss him again. Wouldn't give up Manor for him, though. Not for one day.  
  
One and Leander run out of words. Boss' gaze drifts down to Bay.  
  
_**Seven**_  
  
All three sit around the table in silence.  
  
Bay fidgets.  
  
"I'll take her out with me," Boss says.  
  
One sighs. "You can't -"  
  
"You want me to stop going out alone." Head-tilt. Raised eyebrow.  
  
"We're all old now," One says. "Please stay close to Manor."  
  
Boss smiles.  
  
"Even though you need to wander," One says. "I can't - I just - we need you alive. Please."  
  
"I know," Boss says. "I'll take her."  
  
One shakes his head. "You're plotting," he says.  
  
"It's what I do," Boss says.  
  
"Not like we can talk her out of anything," Leander says, and laughs.  
  
_**Eight**_  
  
The room she slept in is hers, now.  
  
She lives - lived - in the communal house. It's warmer in winter than anywhere else. The big house is for the council, anyone weak, or ill, and open to everyone during the day. They store things here.  
  
She's not ill and weak. She's not the council. She doesn't belong here.  
  
Manor had a thousand and thirty eight people last time anyone counted, and now all of them are going to know something happened. Darren's gone, and she's living up here. Big changes.  
  
She curls up on the bed and tries not to cry.  
  
_**Nine**_  
  
Her belongings - a change of clothes, a few trinkets, the bear - turn up whilst she's helping with breakfast. They sit on a pile of fresh sheets. She looks, but there isn't an inch of dust in her room.  
  
"I told him not to bother," Boss says, leaning against the door frame. "We clean up after ourselves."  
  
Leander, then. He used to play with her. He taught her how to use a gun, and didn't look upset when she stopped wanting to touch weapons. He looked relieved.  
  
"We're going out tomorrow," Boss says. "Front gate. Dawn. Don't be late."  
  
Bay nods.  
  
_**Ten**_  
  
Dawn is cold. Bay stands by the front gate, rubbing her arms through her jacket. She didn't bring anything because she hasn't anything to take.  
  
She closes her eyes for a moment, leaning against one of the metal struts that hold up Manor's wall. Her bed is too hard. She couldn't sleep.  
  
She opens them and Boss is there. She yelps, sliding sideways. Boss catches her arm and steadies her. "Awake would be nice," she says, with a little smile.  
  
"Sorry," Bay says.  
  
"Here." Boss hands her a small, leather backpack. "Everything you need is in there. Come along, cub."  
  
_**Eleven**_  
  
They make it all the way to Olstead, the town on the hill, in a day. She aches, but she doesn't stop.  
  
Olstead has more people than Manor, but something is missing.  
  
"Where's the big kitchen?" she says to Boss.  
  
Boss laughs. "They don't have a communal kitchen here. Every household has a separate one."  
  
"They're wasting food," Bay says.  
  
"It's the way the world was before," Boss says.  
  
Bay trails her. She understands wanting to make something special - that's why people ask for a space in the kitchen, sometimes - but why would you do it for every single meal?  
  
_**Twelve**_  
  
Boss stacks a dozen books, each wrapped in an oilcloth, in her bag. The person who gives them to her disappears into the quiet Olstead night.  
  
Manor would be rowdy with music, and singing. Bay wants to be there. She wants to dance with Darren.  
  
Darren's gone.  
  
They sleep in an empty house. The walls are solid, but the stairs creak when she goes upstairs, and there's two skeletons lying together on a big bed. She thinks maybe one was holding the other.  
  
All the clothes are moth-eaten. A lost cause. But she finds intact shoes with the strangest heels.  
  
_**Thirteen**_  
  
They don't use the roads. They use paths that used to be walls and cut through places that used to be fields. They sleep in abandoned huts and houses, and Bay clambers in and around a collapsed barn on Boss' orders, digging out any rusting metal she can find. They pile it in a safe place in the old farmyard. Boss marks where they are on a map.  
  
There are mines, but most metal comes out of cities. Bay was told, once, that they're breaking apart giant buildings full of metal and glass. They sound like something in a dream.  
  
_**Fourteen**_  
  
In a hut with half a roof she finds a scratching on the wall. It looks like Darren's handwriting. It's addressed to her. She bites her lip, running her fingers across the clean marks in the dirty wall.  
  
It isn't much. He's talking to her like she's there when she isn't. Tells her that he misses her. Tells her he misses home. Tells her he's thinks the city will be home.  
  
There's two cities near to Manor. One to west, and the other north, where Boss and Leander came from.  
  
Boss calls and Bay doesn't look back. It would hurt.  
  
_**Fifteen**_  
  
During the fourth trip, Bay says, "Can we go to a city?"  
  
Boss kicks an old stile in, rotten wood cracking under her feet. "Why?"  
  
"I've never seen one," Bay says. "I want to understand what they are." Boss likes it when Bay understands something. Boss doesn't like that she can't stay still during a hunt. They've never taken down deer together. "I'll practise hunting and stillness twice as much. I'll get better at it."  
  
"Twice nothing is nothing," Boss says, soft. Bay flinches.  
  
"I'll take you to a city when you carry a knife," Boss says, and walks away.  
  
_**Sixteen**_  
  
Bay likes knives less than she likes guns.  
  
When people shoot a thing, it can't be taken back or stopped. When you use a knife, it's the same and different. You can be stopped but something changes, in you and them, forever.  
  
In the outbreak, her father used a knife. He named it Mercy. She remembers steel-silver, blood-red on white cloth, blood-red on -  
  
She doesn't want to remember the other thing, so she doesn't. She tells people she doesn't remember her parents, and most times it's true.  
  
There's a knife in her room when she gets back. She ignores it.  
  
_**Seventeen**_  
  
On the fifth trip, she packs her own bag. She needs a few day's rations, a waterproof, a box of creams and bandages, a short length of rope, and something small to trade just in case. Boss carries needles or fishing weights. Bay decides on a handful of little animals made out of leftover leather. Every child wants toys.  
  
After a moment of thought, she picks up the knife, sheath and all, and crams it in the side. Boss will get angry if she doesn't have it on her.  
  
It makes her bag heavier on her back, just being there.  
  
_**Eighteen**_  
  
Boss doesn't speak to her for three days.  
  
On the first day, Bay worries. The second, she's too busy trying to keep up to worry. The third day, she falls in a stream and Boss walks away. That night, Boss doesn't even cook enough for two.  
  
Bay curls up on the third night, hungry, wet, miserable. When she wakes up the knife is lying on the ground.  
  
The sheath is meant to be strapped to her arm, the knife safe within, easy to reach. It unbalances her.  
  
Boss gives her food after, and a small part of Bay hates her.  
  
_**Nineteen**_  
  
Bay said she wouldn't leave Manor for Darren, but she misses him. It's harvest, and she's helping, and he's not there beside her. He's not in the cannery making the cranky old machinery work, or at the big dance later, dancing with her.  
  
She sits alone with a cup of something and everyone goes around her, and she wants to cry.  
  
She goes to bed and lays in the dark. It rains, that night. She stays awake and listens, and wonders where he is, out there. If he's safe. If he's going to be safe all the way through winter.  
  
_**Twenty**_  
  
She feels like a broken brick, a fire of wet wood, a cup cracked and crazed. Boss doesn't go out in winter so Bay spends most of her time alone in her room, huddled under heavy blankets, staring at a wall.  
  
She almost wants to wait and see if someone comes for her, but no one ever does.  
  
She goes out for the winter festival and wanders the crowds. She loves Manor. She does. It's written in her bones, etched into her being, what she's made of.  
  
She doesn't know if it loves her, now. No one meets her eyes.  
  
_**Twenty One**_  
  
Leander comes when she doesn't leave her room for two days straight. She pretends to sleep, but she knows his sigh. He sits on the bed.  
  
"Sweetling," he says. "You can't stay here forever."  
  
She breathes slow and even. Her eyes prickle. She can so.  
  
"The world changes but teenagers don't." His hand, warm, smooths over her hair. "He's the hole in your heart, sweetling, I know."  
  
"You don't," she mutters.  
  
"If they're a hole in your heart," he says. "Let them go. You need someone to fill your heart, not cut it open."  
  
"Go away," she says.  
  
He doesn't.  
  
_**Twenty Two**_  
  
He doesn't leave her alone all winter. He wakes her up and sends her to bed, like a child. He takes her with him when he works, checking the beer, the wine, the storerooms. He shows her how to record and balance supplies with demand. He makes sure she eats.  
  
She trails him like his lost puppy.  
  
Council meets once a month. She didn't know running Manor took so much work. Fourteen in a room not quite big enough for them discussing trade and what they'll plant and people who might be trouble.  
  
She doesn't want to, but she listens.  
  
_**T** **wenty Three**_  
  
Going to a city needs more planning than Bay ever dreamed of.  
  
Leander hears about it and wants to make it a full trip. He wants to scavenge there. So they'll take carts, and other people, and they'll go visit the Pangers to the north. He involves her in the planning as much as Boss will let him.  
  
It's noise and worry. Outside Manor, in the mud of thaw, Bay finds entire woods full of snowdrops and peace.  
  
They finally pull off a hunt, bringing down a stag with fresh, magnificent antlers.  
  
Boss ruffles her hair and smiles at her.  
  
_**Twenty Four**_  
  
It'll take a month to get to the city. "Faster than before," Leander says, and means when he and Boss came from the north before Bay was born. There's the road to Olstead, then a old, wide one straight to the city from there.  
  
"Dangerous," Boss says.  
  
"There aren't as many bandits around there these days," Leander says. "It's not worth it. We'll go in summer. There'll be more feed for the animals."  
  
Knowing where they're going in a few months, Bay gets jittery just waiting. It's where Darren's gone, she knows it. She wants him like she wants sunlight.  
  
_**Twenty Five**_  
  
There's one last trip before they go. Boss wants to check on the fish in the river nearby. It's May, according to the calendars the council keep. On the way back they meet a man. He hails them brightly.  
  
They exchange news over a fire. Boss doesn't mention Manor to him. Maybe Bay should have noticed that, whilst he talks with her about all the things he's seen.  
  
The fire burns low overnight, so Bay gets up to fetch deadwood. When she turns around he's there, looking at her. He says things she doesn't like. He won't let her leave.  
  
_**Twenty Six**_  
  
No one's ever hurt Bay. Not even when father was low and angry did he hurt her, or her mother. She remembers that.  
  
The stranger holds her arm so tight she can feel the bruise forming and he doesn't let her run.  
  
Her father shouted at the wall in the basement for hours, kicked sacks of grain, sometimes sat down and cried angry tears, and she never understood what he was angry at.  
  
She has a knife. The stranger doesn't expect her to have a knife. She shouts at him and he doesn't stop and she has her knife out -  
  
_**Twenty Seven**_  
  
Boss finds her next to him.  
  
"You clean your weapon," she says, and holds out a scrap of worn black cloth, almost threadbare. "Understand?"  
  
Bay cleans the knife.  
  
Boss robs the body and drags it into the undergrowth.  
  
"We should bury him," Bay says.  
  
"Wastes time." Boss covers his face, her eyes flickering up to meet Bay's. "Be careful with your kindness."  
  
Bay nods. She sheathes the knife. It's heavier now.  
  
"Best be gone," Boss says.  
  
"You didn't warn me," Bay says. "You let me - you didn't -"  
  
Boss straightens up. "Some things have to be learned the hard way, cub."  
  
_**Twenty Eight**_  
  
The fire's a lonely beacon in the darkness, but it's warmer than the stars. Bay lays back and watches them sparkle in the clear sky.  
  
"What's your name?" she says. "I don't know it. Does anyone?"  
  
"Fourteen people do." She can hear the slight smile in Boss' voice now. "It belongs to a ghost, someone who died long before the End."  
  
Bay shrugs. "Still. What is it?"  
  
A pause. Boss says, "Helena Cutter," and laughs. It's an eerie laugh, and quiet. Maybe sad. "Go to sleep. I'll wake you."  
  
Bay curls up. She doesn't think it's a bad name.  
  
_**Twenty Nine**_  
  
Sometimes Bay wonders if Boss would have let that man do things to her. If Boss would let her be hurt, alone in the woods.  
  
Then Bay remembers what happened when a woman went to the big house saying a man'd hurt her, the way the council took him, questioned him and then he disappeared. Fled, in the dark, with only the clothes on his back, and turned up dead days later.  
  
Boss steps lightly. She could have been anywhere in the dark. Bay knows, surer than she knows the future, that Boss was out there, waiting, watching over her.  
  
_**Thirty**_  
  
They set off when the calendar turns to June. Four carts, eight donkeys, and ten people. Boss sits up on a cart and watches the world pass with eyes like ice, and Leander sits at the very front. Bay darts around them, and when they meet other communities after Olstead she listens to stories, asks others her age if they've seen someone like Darren.  
  
Sometimes she gets word that he's passed through.  
  
Sometimes she finds a message scratched into a wall.  
  
The road to the city is wider than the big house, covered in moss and grass, and stretches forever.  
  
_**Thirty One**_  
  
One night, she sees wolves.  
  
At least, she thinks they're wolves. There aren't many around Manor yet, even though the animals are well-penned. She's sitting watch with Boss, and in the shadows she sees yellow eyes gleam. She sits still, terrifyingly still, and says nothing.  
  
A body blurs. She blinks, trying to see where it went.  
  
Boss says, "We're in their territory." Her voice is pitched low. It carries. "But they're well-fed."  
  
Maybe Boss can see better than she can.  
  
"They know the consequences of trying for the donkeys," Boss adds, and the fire gives her smile an eerie tint.  
  
_**Thirty Two**_  
  
The people have less out here. They're just as well fed, clothed, and happy, but maybe they have a radio, someone who knows how to treat illness. Manor has generators and a blacksmith and knowledge.  
  
These people will give most everything for company and news.  
  
Leander says to Boss, "We could stand to profit if we set up a travelling doctor."  
  
Boss makes a noise and glances away.  
  
"Start closer to home," he says. "But get out here eventually."  
  
Bay looks at the line of little wooden crosses on the edge of a village and wonders where their children are.  
  
_**Thirty Three**_  
  
The city appears on the horizon a week before they reach it.  
  
Bay sits on a cart and squints at the distance. Even here, she can see how tall the buildings are, and the shapes of half-collapsed tops. If she doesn't squint, it looks like a vast grey-green dome.  
  
It eats the horizon as they come closer. In the end it's all she can see, from one side to another.  
  
They'll visit the Pangers first. They live on the edge, in between spaces, where the city is covered in young trees and grassy meadows growing out of cracked, worn blackness.  
  
_**Thirty Four**_  
  
Bay can't imagine living where buildings eat the sky.  
  
It doesn't matter where they are in the cleared, winding path to the Pangers, cutting between rows of identical large houses. She's always aware of the looming grey presence of the city. It draws her gaze. She leans in its direction.  
  
Darren's in there somewhere, she thinks.  
  
They set up camp in what Leander calls a park. It looks like an overgrown field. She doesn't have watch but she sits up, staring at the buildings in bright moonlight. The deep, dark maze of their shadows tempt her. She stays still, trapped.  
  
_**Thirty Five**_  
  
Something's wrong with the Pangers.  
  
Bay sees it the same time Boss does. Half the Panger's buildings, all the centre, are blackened ruins. Leander leaps from his cart to talk to their leader, face drawn tight.  
  
Fire, their leader says. A spark in the grain silo.  
  
Bay shivers.  
  
The Pangers aren't more than four hundred people, but that's a lot to feed when most of your stores have burned.  
  
"They're lucky," Boss says later. "The silo's explosion used up the air in one go. It suffocated the fire."  
  
Bay tries not to look at the fresh graves in their graveyard.  
  
_**Thirty Six**_  
  
Boss can't fix the buildings, but she can fix the Panger's broken radio. When she does, she sits and talks into it for hours.  
  
She reports back for dinner, trapped rabbits with twenty year old chopped carrots that came out of cans. She says, "Manor's sending food. Some now, another load when we bring in the harvest."  
  
The relief that radiates from the Pangers makes Bay feel sick, right to her bones.  
  
"And Olstead are sending bricks and men," Boss adds. "They'll build you new storehouses soon enough."  
  
"Thank you," says the Panger's leader. He's crying. "Thank you so much."  
  
_**Thirty Seven**_  
  
In the night, when she should be asleep, Bay hears Leander say, "What did you do to them?"  
  
"I reminded Olstead who keeps the roads clear." Boss sounds cold. Olstead runs on trade, Bay knows. "And how much trouble they'd be in without the Pangers guarding the city exit."  
  
"You threatened them," Leander says.  
  
"I dragged their heads out of the sand," Boss says.  
  
Leander sighs.  
  
Boss says, "One bad year and they'll come running to join us."  
  
"We don't need to threaten them," Leander says.  
  
Boss snorts. "They're still stuck in the past. I'll do whatever makes them think."  
  
_**Thirty Eight**_  
  
Leander forms their main camp in a safe place just inside the city. Buildings stand strong around them. Boss takes Bay and leads her through debris-filled streets to a place where all the buildings are tall enough to touch the sky, picking through old rooms - shops, she says - to see if there's anything they can use.  
  
Shops are full of things. Who could use all the stuff?  
  
Boss stops her at one point and says, "This is the centre of the city."  
  
They've been walking for most of the day. Bay turns in place, slow, dwarfed by towering silver giants.  
  
_**Thirty Nine**_  
  
Bay can't quite grasp it.  
  
This city had millions, Boss says, and a million is a thousand by a thousand and again. The world had billions, and a billion is a word she can only apply to the stars. It's an uncountable word, impossible.  
  
This city had millions. All of them are gone.  
  
"Why?" she says.  
  
Boss doesn't answer her.  
  
Boss says, "We overused the world. Animals and plants are already recovering. All this will return to wilderness within your lifetime, if you live long enough."  
  
Boss says, "Come on. It's going to rain. We can't stay in the open."  
  
_**Forty**_  
  
Whilst everyone scouts and gathers supplies, Bay slips away and looks.  
  
In a few hours, she finds it. A message scratched into a door, invisible from all but one angle. He's left instructions, directions. She takes her bag, promising herself she'll only be gone for a couple days, and follows them. She follows the other instructions she finds, too, through narrow alleyways and over creaking, tumbled buildings until she walks up to a house tucked between larger buildings, and she finds Darren.  
  
He laughs to see her, and when he holds her, it feels like she's found her way home.  
  
_**Forty One**_  
  
He hasn't much but he has clean water, and food, and a safe place to sleep.  
  
He tells her everything he's seen since they were caught, talks until his voice is rubbed raw and scratchy, and after that they kiss, and after that they curl up on an ancient bed.  
  
It's good, being this close to someone else.  
  
She traces a new scar along his jaw as he sleeps, half-hidden under fuzz that'll never make a proper beard. He needs to shave.  
  
She barely thinks of the others, or how they'll worry for her. She's here. It's enough for now.  
  
_**Forty Two**_  
  
The first day, he takes her up to the top of an old, massively tall building and shows her the entire world from the top. She can see Olstead from here, see how the land forms a valley around the city, can almost believe she sees the top of Manor's broadcast tower.  
  
It's cold, as night draws in, but they huddle up there until morning because she can't look away.  
  
"You see," he whispers to her. "We're nothing compared to what they could do. Nothing."  
  
She keeps her mouth shut and leans into him, wondering why they lost it all.  
  
_**Forty Three**_  
  
He shows her around his quarter of the city. There are wild cats skittering from attention, and a pack of small dogs that bark but don't trouble them.  
  
In open daylight, when he talks, his face holds a fevered shine to it. She tries to ignore it, to focus on the butter-smile and his hand in hers, the way it feels to walk half-leaning against him, how they fit so neatly together.  
  
He's thinner than he used to be.  
  
He gets dizzy. She takes him back to his house, makes him eat, drink, and sleep, and sits outside and shivers.  
  
_**Forty Four**_  
  
There's a wolf in the dark.  
  
The stillness of it wakes her. She blinks the bleariness away and looks again. It's leggy. A youngster. Doesn't have the mass to be an adult. It won't be alone, out there, but she can't take her eyes away from it. It stares back at her the same way, and creeps closer, step by step.  
  
A wolf cub on the edge of adulthood.  
  
It stands inches away from her. She holds her hand out, not knowing why. It sniffs, delicate, silver fur and golden, watchful eye.  
  
In one movement it turns and bounds away.  
  
_**Forty Five**_  
  
"No one remembers these people," Darren whispers in the dim dark of his shelter. "No one knows the people who died here. I can't imagine how they lived. But they'll remember me, Bay. They'll remember us. Forever."  
  
People do remember those who died, Bay wants to tell him. Not their names or their faces but that they were, that they lived and loved and were as brightly human as anyone today. All the dead from before are a lesson for now. They were both taught that. Why has he changed?  
  
He tries to kiss her doubts away. It doesn't work.  
  
_**Forty Six**_  
  
He's feverish for the next whole day, but when the moon rises he gets energetic. "This way," he says, and leads her into the night, pulls her by her hand to a hole in the ground that leads to a tunnel that leads to a vast room that still has electric light, and computers, and a cavernous space full of -  
  
She's seen pictures of these things.  
  
Missiles.  
  
They're all supposed to be gone.  
  
Bay leaves her bag behind her. She stands on a metal platform and stares out over the things that destroyed the world. They look innocent in white.  
  
_**Forty Seven**_  
  
"Look," Darren says. "There's enough left here to burn cities." He turns to her, eyes shining. "We can punish Manor for hurting us."  
  
She stares at him. "Manor didn't hurt us," she says.  
  
He waves it off. "They pushed us out. Just like the Pangers."  
  
"You burned their storerooms?" she says, voice like a breaking wall. "On purpose?"  
  
He smiles. "Fire is as beautiful as you, Bay."  
  
The Pangers were going to starve this winter, if Boss hadn't talked to Manor. Hadn't helped them.  
  
She scrambles for her bag.  
  
"Bay," he says. "Bay."  
  
"I can't," she says, and she runs.  
  
_**Forty Eight**_  
  
She should have known.  
  
She should have thought.  
  
No fire was ever an accident, around Darren.  
  
She stumbles through the streets in the dark, trying to find her way out. He didn't catch her like he should have, didn't come running with sweet words to make her stay, like he wanted her. Like he loved her.  
  
She should have known.  
  
She sees the light of a lantern in the dark. They don't flicker like fire. Her feet are lead as she walks towards it. Boss is waiting.  
  
Boss doesn't judge her. Boss hands her a bread roll and says, "Report."  
  
_**Forty Nine**_  
  
She leads Boss back there the next evening, moving under cover of long twilight shadows. He's build a fire outside the house and is throwing broken pieces of wood into it. He stares into the flames.  
  
Boss stays in a shadow. Bay approaches, padding across concrete. His face lights up when he sees her. "You're alright!"  
  
"I'm sorry," Bay says, and lies. "I didn't like that place much."  
  
"You'll get used to it," he says. "Come here."  
  
She comes.  
  
He holds out a gun. "I found it in an office," he says. "A handgun. Only the best for you, Bay."  
  
_**Fifty**_  
  
He always knew she doesn't like guns.  
  
She takes it, turning it in her hands. It's loaded, the safety off.  
  
Just because she doesn't like guns doesn't mean she knows nothing about them.  
  
"What's wrong?" he says. "You're not happy. You should be happy."  
  
"I am happy," she says.  
  
A loud footfall grabs his attention. He whirls around and sees Boss.  
  
"Funny meeting you here," Boss says. "Having fun?"  
  
"Please," Bay says, and doesn't know why. "Please."  
  
Darren grins, stepping towards the fire, back proud and straight. "Yes, we are, Helena."  
  
Bay flinches. He shouldn't know Boss' name.  
  
Boss smiles.  
  
_**Fifty One**_  
  
Darren says, "You're a hypocrite."  
  
Boss tilts her head, staring at him across the fire.  
  
"I made the computers work. I watched you. I saw both of you." He moves forwards, eyes fire-bright. "You had no right to judge me."  
  
Boss says, "I didn't do the judging." Voice soft, face hard, unafraid. "I said nothing at all."  
  
Bay curls her fingers around the gun.  
  
"I'm just like you," Darren says. "Only I'm younger and stronger and so much better."  
  
Boss smiles, and it is not kind.  
  
"Kill her," Darren says. "Bay, kill her."  
  
Bay raises the gun, her hand shaking.  
  
_**Fifty Two**_  
  
She doesn't like weapons. The gun's old, rusted. It might not work.  
  
Excuses.  
  
The bang deafens her, for a moment. He falls over.  
  
Butter-smile, gone. Sweet words, a laugh that thrilled her to the bones, the fevered whispers, gone.  
  
She wants to cry but she can't.  
  
Boss stands on the other side of the fire. The firelight casts in her brightness and shadows, forever dancing with each other.  
  
"Are we monsters?" Bay says. She doesn't lower the gun.  
  
"You're not a monster," Boss says. "You're a wolf."  
  
Bay shivers.  
  
"You set a wolf to guard against wolves," Boss says. "Always."  
  
_**Fifty Three**_  
  
Leander reaches out to hug her, at their camp. She clings to him and cries into his coat. They stay there, at their fire surrounded by carts and stinking, beautiful donkeys, until Boss hands them food.  
  
"Sentiment," she says, mild and amused.  
  
"Come here," Leander says, and she lets him pull her into his lap. "Sentiment makes the world go around, didn't you know that?" he says.  
  
"You're still a fool," Boss says, but she kisses a cheek.  
  
"Without fools, we won't have dreamers," Leander says. He reaches out and takes Bay's hand. "You're inheriting the world, sweetling. Dream big."  
  
_**Fifty Four**_  
  
They come back in time for the last summer harvest, carts loaded high. Bay throws herself into helping. She uses a hand-scythe, and with every strike at innocent hay it feels lighter in her hands. She spends her breaks practising stillness, the way it settles into her.  
  
She tells them Boss told her to do this. It's true.  
  
Wolf. The word spins in her head. Wolf, the yellow-eyed silhouettes in the night. Wolf, haunting city streets, padding across concrete. Wolf, with knives for claws. Wolf, disguised in human skin.  
  
She doesn't want to be a wolf, but it feels right.  
  
_**Fifty Five**_  
  
Bay didn't cry when she fell over, when other children called her names, or when her parents died. Bay got back up, ended the fight, left the house quietly.  
  
Bay smiles, and it feels more and more like a friendly mask. She walks a step behind Boss and learns to hunt and patrol. To see danger where it hides. Sometimes words are enough. Sometimes they have to fight.  
  
Boss is ruthless. Bay tries to be. It gets easier with practise.  
  
She knows she's going to have to keep Manor safe, when Boss can't.  
  
She loves Manor more than anything else.  
  
_**Fifty Six**_  
  
She meets a boy with a hungry look. He's not Darren, but no one is. He's learned the ways of electricity from his mother, and he's come to Manor to stay.  
  
She makes him chase her, to see if he can catch her. He hasn't, yet. He's trying.  
  
He's not another wolf but a dog, a hound, a companion. He sends her gifts made of old wires. She keeps them in the wardrobe, next to the bear.  
  
One day she'll pretend he caught her. This night she curls up in bed alone and dreams of dancing firelight on Darren's face.  
  
_**Fifty Seven**_  
  
Bay is starting to be called Ghost, because she haunts Manor in the dark.  
  
She's found a old tree on the edge with a dozen huge branches that reach out in a circle, and a dip right in the middle. She sits there, some nights, alone in deafening quiet.  
  
Sometimes Boss disappears. She doesn't know where Boss goes. She doesn't want to find her, because Boss only said Bay was a wolf. Bay doesn't want to learn Boss is a monster, because she'd have to do something about it.  
  
She's younger, maybe faster, but she knows she'd lose that fight.  
  
_**Fifty Eight**_  
  
One day, she goes out on her own. She walks from dawn until the peak of the day, and then she sits under a tree on a ridge.  
  
She can see for miles and miles. There's a house along the way that doesn't look lived in. The fields are turning grain-gold, swathes of white cutting through them. Somewhere to harvest, if they need to.  
  
Cath down in the tannery wanted her to find a flower called woad, and maybe she will. Maybe she won't.  
  
Bay picks herself up and wanders along the ridge. She's sure to find something out here.


End file.
